# Survey Generator # Version 1.0 # By Mike Calabrese # http://www.mikecalabrese.com # 3-4-2001 # This program is available for free on an AS-IS basis. I am not # responsible for consequential damages, loss of income or whatever # else that may happen as a result of the use of this program. This program is designed to generate the front end code necessary to have a Survey Program on a web site. T consists of 2 Perl scripts, an HTML file, a counter file and this README file. IMPORTANT- The output from this program will only work with another Perl Script called "The Voting Booth" by Virtual Marketing Technologies and copyrighted by Virtual Marketing Technologies, all rights reserved. The script itself is called vote.cgi or vote.pl and is available at http://www.scriptshome.com . This series of Perl Scripts and the Voting Booth script together will allow you to generate working Surveys on the fly. The way the script works is that you supply the topic, the question and anywhere from 2 to 5 answers on the form called surgen1.pl. This information is then passed onto the script called surgen2.pl. This script builds the HTML survey form, inserts the necessary information into that form and builds the supporting data file that is used by vote.pl or vote.cgi. The following configuration changes need to be made in order for these scripts to function properly: Regardless of whether you obtained these files via download or email, they should be configured directorywise as follows: (In your cgi-bin area) surgen(directory) README surgen1.pl surgen2.pl surveynumfile (In your html docs area) surgen(directory) surarc.html (the survey1.html, survey2.html etc forms that are generated will go here.) Be sure that all directories, the surveynumfile and the surarc.html form have their file permissions set or chmodded to 755 and all perl scripts to 755. Be certain that your path to the Perl interpreter is the same on your machine as is indicated at the top of the Perl scripts. Typing "which perl" at the command line should answer that. surgen1.pl- This is the file that you submit the new survey parameters from. It's location should only be known to the web site administrator or webmaster. There should be no additional configuration required for this file. surgen2.pl- This file is where most of the configuring takes place. Please make sure that the following variables are properly configured: $votingbooth_url_path- This is the exact url path to where your vote.cgi or vote.pl script resides. This is the Voting Booth script by Virtual Marketing Technologies. An example would be: "http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/vote/vote.pl" $html_survey_directory- This is the exact UNIX path to where your HTML survey forms will reside. Make sure that there is a trailing slash on this path. You can call this directory whatever you want. The example is called "surgen". An example would be: "/exact/unix/path/to/surgen/" $url_survey_directory- This is the exact url path to where your HTML survey forms will reside. Make sure that there is a trailing slash at the end of this url. You can call this directory whatever you want. An example would be: http://www.yourdomain.com/surgen/ $survey_datafile_dir- This is the exact UNIX path to where your survey data files will reside. I just put them in the same directory as the html forms but you can put them whereever you want. Again, be sure to include the trailing slash. An example would be: "/exact/UNIX/path/to/surgen/" $want_archive_form- If you want to have an archive form that is up- dated each time a new survey is created, set this variable to 1 and uncomment the link that points to the archive html form from the survey form. If you leave this variable set to 2, the archive HTML form will not be written to. $archive_unix_path- This is the exact UNIX path to where the HTML archive form will reside. I placed the archive form within my HTML docs surgen directory but you can put it whereever you want. If you chose 2 for the $want_archive_form variable above, you don't have to configure this variable. An example would be: "/exact/UNIX/path/to/surgen/" $archive_url_path- This is the exact url path to where the HTML archive form will reside. An example would be: "http://www.yourdomain.com/surgen/surarc.html" $archive_urlname- This is the name of the archive HTML file: "surarc.html" surveynumfile- This file is read from and written to by surgen2.pl. surgen2.pl grabs the number that is in this file and places it within the survey HTML form that it creates to make it distinctive. It then increases that number by 1 and writes it to surveynumfile. This file comes with the number 1 in it as the default value. You can set it to whatever positive whole number that you like that is less than, say 30 million. surarc.html- This is the file that shows users your survey archive. If you select this option in surgen2.pl, surgen2.pl will add the survey that you just created to this archive HTML page. surarc.html can be placed anywhere that your HTML documents reside but should probably reside in the same directory that your HTML survey forms will reside. Once all variables are configured, be sure that the vote.cgi or vote.pl script is properly configured. you can get this script and supporting documents at the Virtual Marketing Technologies website at http://www.scriptshome.com . Once all configuring has been done, simply bring up the file surgen1.pl, fill in the blanks and submit the form. If all of your variables are configured properly the next screen should tell you that your survey has been created along with a link to it's location. These scripts have been successfully tested in a UNIX environment.